Red Ribbon, A Story Told From
by Juuhachigou-eighteen
Summary: A saga from a different perspective with slightly warped events. The next chapter will be uploaded as soon as I get a couple reviews. Canon Character Appearances: General White, Murasaki, Colonel Violet, Colonel Yellow, Colonel Silver. & more.
1. Upgraded Command

(Disclaimer: I do not own Dragonball, nor any of the characters except the narrator, Larry, and a couple soldiers who will be apparent in the next couple chapters. Please note, I will upload another chapterevery time a newreview has been submitted.)

No one believed Colonel Silver when he reported that he had lost one of the most valuable items in the world because he had been injured and knocked out by a toddler with a monkey tail. Unfortunately for both him and me that meant he was going to be executed the next morning and I would be shipped off to a new commanding officer. I had been the only other person around the temporary base when it had happened – everyone else was off in search of the said most valuable item in the world, which had been tracked by our radars to be approximately within the base's vicinity due to the unique wavelengths it emitted – and I had observed the fight through the window of one of the several white plaster and concrete igloo-like structures that had made up Silver's temporary base. I was still regretting not helping him. I wished I had paid attention to the fight closer; maybe I could have saved a life.

My job as a soldier in the world's greatest crime organization paid 60 times the weekly salary of the average Wal-Mart staff member and still I was not happy. This, of course, could have complimented the fact that another soldier known as Larry (who was widely regarded as being an absolute lunatic) and I were stuffed in the backseat of a jet being hurtled through a snowstorm freezing our nose hairs off. Larry, a blond-haired thinly built person of about 20 years of age with hazel eyes looked at me through his blue frost-covered goggles, grinned wildly like a madman and asked, "hey, Joe, where are we going?"  
My eyes narrowed and I tried to slump as far forward as I could in order to keep the wind from ripping at my face. '_Don't respond._' I thought, clamping my teeth together in order to keep them from chattering. I remembered what happened when people responded to his questions.  
"Joe-chan?" Larry looked concerned for a few moments and then poked me in the cheek. "Nani?" He jabbed his finger into my left cheek repeatedly, like a child who pressed the assistance bell in a store and kept pressing because he enjoyed the BINGing noise it made.  
'_Ignore…ignore…ignore…_'  
"Nananjookar---"  
"Shut up! My name is Joe! Joe, god damnit!" I exploded, spitting what must have been four ounces of slobber at him, which may have iced over before it made contact with his dark green shirt. "If I had my rifle I swear I'd---"  
"Joe-chan!" He exclaimed, throwing his arms around me as if I were a long-lost best friend. Instantly I felt very offended. "Thank goodness you haven't quuatsukied yet!"  
I glanced out of the corner of my eye at the pilot, who looked at me through the rearview mirror. The jet suddenly jerked to the right, causing me to be thrown forward and to drag Larry along. The black-haired pilot had warned us about some brief turbulence due to the oncoming blizzard…

As he had so many times before, Larry had invaded my bubble. And as usual, my initial response was to beat the snot out of him, but the pilot's comment stopped me.  
"Are you guys always like this?" He asked like a bored taxi driver who had seen all of life's losers. I fought through the gyrations to my feet and shoved Larry back to where we had been sitting, gave him a look, and he kept to himself the rest of the trip. I felt no need to respond to the pilot's question. However, Larry continued to yell out random statements such as "I am the king of Candy Cane Land. Bow down to me and my hole card of glorious eternal spiffy butt-kickness," and "I am a self". But after a while he was quiet and began picking at the back of the pilot's leather-covered seat. Only when I asked the pilot if he could pull the roof up did Larry stop and look up, and then behind.  
"Well," said Larry in awe. "Whatdaya know? I never knew the tops of jets could be pulled back like that. Like a convertible sunroof…" he paused as the reinforced glass roof slid forward over our heads and sealed off any open spaces. Larry was obviously staring very intently at something, but I paid no attention and shut my green eyes, feeling the temperature rise slightly and the numbness in my fingers diminish. I was just slipping into sleep when Larry shouted, "Holy smockdorf! We're being followed by six other jets like this one only with missiles and no me!"

I snapped open my eyes and lurched up; my hand automatically darted towards my right, instinctively searching for the shotgun. But my hand groped air, as if my body was saying _wait, this isn't right_. _Where is it_? A sudden panic overtook me and---wait. A jet like ours?  
"Cool it, idiot." Said the brown-mustached pilot, calm as pond water on a midsummer day, "they're just transporting the soldiers from Colonel Silver's base over to General White's. Since Muscle Tower finally got hold of the Dragonball, we sure as hell don't want that damned brat screwing things up again. Defense, fire to kill, skin the kid alive, get me a latte, y' know?"  
I nodded and drew my long blue cotton coat around me tighter. Yeah, defense. That means we were going to be standing in three feet of snow for the entire day in nothing but gray trenchcoats and black sweatpants. Larry, however, did not listen and was now turned around in his seat, sitting up on his knees. He was still peering through the roof, trying to examine the other jets flying next to or behind us. After a few moments he wiped away the frost that covered the window with his sleeve in order to see clearer and said, "or, at least, I don't think there's another me. What if there are? God, what if everyone's developed cloning technology and they've collected my dead skin cells from dust an' 've made 4 cloned brothers? Okay, that would be cool, because then---" he rambled for a bit but neither the pilot or I paid any attention.  
"Sir," I said after a while, leaning forward, "how long until we get to White's base?"  
"Muscle Tower?" The pilot asked, more to himself than anyone else, glancing at the radar. Then he looked at me. "About 10 minutes. Why?"  
"Larry, sir. I think I am going to die of internal hemorrhaging in nine."  
To my surprise, the pilot let out a small chuckle of amusement. I flashed a quick, dead smile, but remained motionless.  
"You're the new guy, aren't you? The one with the really long exotic name no one can pronounce worth shit?"

I raised my chin and glanced indifferently at him for a few moments, then looked out the window. Everything was smoky white, so I looked back to face the front of the jet. Foggy…as it would always be here, according to the snippets of conversations from the soldiers at our main headquarters I'd caught during my first day, the first half hour before I had been flown off with a bunch of other relatively new recruits to learn the rules of Colonel Silver. But Silver was dead and now both Larry and I would have to learn a new officer's idiosyncrasies. Nine minutes and counting…  
"Joe." I replied softly. "Everyone calls me Joe."  
The pilot didn't respond. It felt like the mere five feet that separated us had become an impassable barrier, a bubble, his personal space. I knew what that silence meant; _I'm done chatting with you_._ Closing communication link._ I acknowledged the silent message he had sent me and cut the line between us in two, merely spent the rest of the time watching Larry draw with his finger on the foggy window of our blue and white jet. _Roger, sir_.  
Five minutes…  
I shut my eyes and relaxed, told myself that I needed to conserve energy. '_Shivering burns fuel, Nananjookartslart_.' I thought to myself, twitching at my real name and opening one eye. I looked at Larry again. He was doing something absurd involving his mouth and his fist. I couldn't quite tell what he was doing in my drowsy state, except that it was very bizarre. I closed my eyes again and my consciousness stepped out for a quick breather.  
As it reluctantly returned to my mind, my body was being thrown about like a small jagged pebble in a rock tumbler. It took a few moments for my brain to register the pain, and even longer to note that people were speaking. Suddenly the tumbling stopped and I opened an eye but quickly shut it again. The sun was too bright. Damn sun. Stupid light rays and…wait, the sun? Something strange was going on here. I sat up and finally realized that we had landed. The pilot apparently needed a little extra training in landing, but he didn't say anything. I was beginning to envy him and his red and tan scarf. He looked so comfortable, so warm and dismissive of the cold. I hadn't even gotten out of the jet and already I was craving a cup of hot cocoa with marshmallows and a huge blazing fire. The roof slid back and I quite literally stumbled out.  
How appropriate. My first introduction to Muscle Tower was a face full of snow.


	2. When we Rest Let's Try to Close Our Eyes

Larry did not leave the jet, not immediately. He pestered the pilot about pies and where his sombrero was, but a swift kick from the pilot made the Red Ribbon soldier locate elsewhere for a source of amusement. He was excited, no doubt about that. While I was more interested in a cup of cocoa, Larry laid down in the snow and began making snow angels. Exactly how he could stand this temperature with nothing on but thin tan jeans, a black leather jacket, and a dark green sweatshirt was beyond me.

Around us, the six other jets were landing, and the army grunts were tromping off the gangways in an orderly fashion and heading into the base barracks. Some glanced at Larry with a dissatisfied look as they past, others rolled their eyes, and some flat out stopped and stared. Some yelled at him, but in reply to all Larry just grinned and said, "so you like making snow angels too? Cool, maybe we can start a club."

I didn't want to miss out on anything important, so I hoisted Larry up and shoved him roughly towards Muscle Tower's door. Muscle Tower almost perfectly matched the Rook piece from a chess game in appearance. The door was wooden, but looked rather strong. Larry obediently began walking off towards the barracks but I took the time to salute to our pilot. Although he was just getting ready to leave, the pilot looked at me for a few moments before the roof of the jet lurched forward and snapped into place, and after a minute the jet roared away. I wasn't quite sure on how to interpret that look, but I quickly put it aside as I felt an impact on the back of my head and momentarily blacked out. Confused and enraged (once awake), I stood up and saw Larry, laughing and making some remark I cannot duplicate. It was not foul or dirty in any way, it was just that he spoke in a language not native to this solar system. But I knew that it had been he who had thrown the snowball.

"Damn it, you---!" I screamed a long string of curse words at him in an attempt to intimidate him, but Larry just laughed and pranced around in a U-turn and headed towards the base. I just let it go and quickly followed. I wasn't sure if there was going to be an introductory speech or what, but when I had first arrived with a gaggle of other soldiers at Silver's base, there had been something like that and it had contained some key points I wouldn't had wanted to miss otherwise, mainly because they had saved my bacon (in one retardedly bizarre case, literally) on numerous occasions.

Eventually, though I did encounter some slight navigational errors, I stumbled upon the spot where the new soldiers were supposed to assemble. Apparently everyone but me knew what to do and where to go and I was beginning to wonder if I had missed something when the pilot had explained things.

The room was fairly large and open, and was surprisingly warm - a welcomed change. Everyone was standing at attention but there was no one in front of the room. Suddenly a loudspeaker exploded with life, with a sound that surprised me; it was laughter, the kind of cackle you would expect to hear coming out of someone who had been committed to an insane asylum. I noticed that at least half of my fellow soldiers had a heart attack, four or five actually fell over in shock, perhaps surprised at the sheer volume (and amount of feedback) of (or coming from) it. Several moments after the laughter dwindled, everyone in the room had to shift as the fallen soldiers picked themselves up and hastily – if not pointlessly – brushed themselves off, possibly in an attempt to hide their blushing faces.

"Welcome to Muscle Tower." Said a Russian-tinted voice on the loudspeaker, now much calmer, but as I was to discover, was prone to sudden outbursts of laughter for no reason whatsoever. "I'm sure you're wondering how things work around here, so let's not waste time and---"

"Sir, yes we are, sir! I want to go to Cincinnati because it's where the pie is, sir! General White, is there any pie around here, because I'm pretty sure we're in Cincinnati's neighbor, sir! Naah-naah Naah-naah, sir!" Said a very familiar voice.

The voice on the loudspeaker seemed to pause and consider that.

"Have you gone insane, or do you think pretending will make it so?"

I stepped forward before Larry could reply, and I only managed to achieve that because Larry had momentarily flailed his arms around in excitement, like he was building up for some explosive outburst of speech.

"Please excuse my cousin, General White." I said, trying to sound like I knew what I was doing. "He is not the most mentally stable human."

I lied, of course; Larry was not my cousin. There was another pause and I got the feeling that everyone in the room began thinking bad thoughts about me. Larry had a talent for stopping important conversations in their tracks, and quite often it affected me the most, which was why I hated him. But ever since I had joined the Red Ribbon Army, I had been stuck with him - first with Colonel Silver and now with General White. I prayed that someday he'd get shot; he was as annoying as a little brother. More so, actually.

"Sure as hell he ain't…" I heard someone mutter, perhaps thinking it was so quiet no one could hear him. It took me a moment to realize that he was replying to my comment about Larry's mental stability. For once, the insane soldier was quiet at the appropriate time.

"First thing first. Levels Three, Four, Five, and Six are off-limits," continued the voice on the loudspeaker. "In other words, every level but the one you're on and the one below."

"General White, sir…" said a concerned-looking soldier next to me, "what exactly are we going to do if that kid doesn't show up? As in, during our spare time?"

Another pause.

"What do I look like, a bloody information kiosk?"

"We don't know what you look like, General White." A soldier chirped up, grinning at his own wit. Some people rolled their eyes in response and everyone else physically or verbally attacked him.

Eventually I was doing just what I thought I would be doing during my jet ride here…standing in three feet of snow on guard duty. But first I got to relax and was able to explore a bit. Level One of Muscle Tower, which was the only level of the tower situated underground, was just the sleeping and supplies quarters; level Two was what one might call the recreation area. I got a new outfit of clothing – another welcomed change – and we even had closed circuit TV. It only turned bad when Larry materialized next to me while I was figuring out which mattress I wanted and said that he wanted to confirm that we were friends. Unfortunately for Larry I had grabbed a shotgun from the supply closet, so I ended up pointing it at his nose and telling him to buzz off and a lot of other irrelevant angry things that made him frown and say something about doughnuts.

Should have known; threats don't work on a guy like Larry.

But the time, regretfully, did come, when I had to put on my hooded gray trenchcoat and thick black sweatpants and walk out of Muscle Tower. I was chosen to be a guard, which couldn't have been any more interesting than what anyone else was doing, except everything else took place i>_inside /i>_ the base. The blizzard was still going on, but it seemed to have lightened up, which perked me up a bit; once the blizzard past, it should become a lot warmer without the rushing wind and biting snow.

"Can you see anything?" I half-yelled through the white cloth covering the bottom half of my face to a dark smudgy shape not too far off, which I hoped was a fellow guard.

"Nope. No, I do not, man, for at the moment I have no eyes," the shape replied. I did not respond for fear of confusing myself. As a guard, our job was simple; shoot anyone unfamiliar who comes too close. But with this blizzard going on I could have deemed Silver himself to be unfamiliar. Hell, I could have even shot Commander Red without knowing it. I wasn't quite sure what Larry's job was – it was probably to be up on level Two, waiting for some hero to come challenge him and the other guys. The only thing he needed to do was to not let people pass.

After a couple hours the blizzard finally let up and I could see again, which was good because at that exact moment a plane with the Red Ribbon Army insignia suddenly crashed into the snow about 50 feet away. This would certainly be something of interest to report.

"Sir," I said, speaking through the radio, "a plane just crashed. One of ours. What shou---"

"Really? He's here already?" White interrupted. A laugh followed moments later. "That was quick! According to HQ, there's supposed to be a kid with a Dragonball on board. The same kid who…who beat up Silver, in fact. Apparently the kid is looking for the Dragonballs too."

I noted the falter in his voice and froze. White didn't believe, or was denying the fact, that a mere toddler had the talent to beat up a grown man capable of knocking professional boxers to the floor. If I hadn't been there, hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I guess I wouldn't have believed it either. "But what kind of kid could beat up Colonel Silver…?" I thought about replying, but then noticed that White seemed to be talking to himself. After a moment I collected myself together and ran to catch up with the other guards, who had gone ahead to inspect the wreckage further.

"No, sir. Only a small robot. Again, one of ours. From the ID number it's safe to say it is…uh, was, excuse me, Silver-sama's." I rose my eyes to the reporting guard in surprise. -Sama? That was a Japanese term used to communicate great respect! "In any case, I see no corpses or anything of that s---" He was suddenly cut-off by a very angry-sounding General.

"A robot? You're calling in to report a ROBOT?" Screamed White. "You just lost your television privileges for a week, Private! I don't care about that, just search for the boy!"

"Y…yes, sir." He muttered in a solemn tone, clicking off his communicator and glaring at us, as if it had been our fault. After a moment his eyes softened and he asked if it wouldn't be too much trouble if one of us could fill him in on what happened during "Animal Face-Off". A gangly blue-haired soldier gave him the thumbs up and we got back on track. The other guards and I explored for a bit, but we couldn't find any indication that a human had been on board.

"General White, are you sure there was supposed to be a kid on board?" I asked. "Like the man stated, there are no signs of a body and the parachutes are in ruins; they haven't been used. He may have jumped out before the crash…or, logically, this may be the wrong plane. If I recall correctly, the reports said nothing about a robot pilot. Even if it WAS from Silver's regiment…"

"If HQ said there was a kid on board, then there was a kid on board."

That was the brief reply, which was strange because I expected a barrage of threats and curses. Even from my short time at Muscle Tower I was beginning to suspect that White was not the calmest person the world and hated to be thought as a liar. Silver had been far different. He had been very cool, calm, and collected…a bit too serious for my liking, but I was sure I was going to prefer him to White.

"Hey! Come over here a second!" Called one the guards, and I climbed up the hill to him.

"It looked like something was dragged through here…" he said, gesturing at a long winding trench of snow leading through a large patch of dead trees. Instantly I saw the connection.

"General White," I reported, "I stand corrected."


	3. Pleasures Restrained

The trail led to Jingle Village, the town where White had kidnapped the mayor, who was currently being held hostage on the top floor of Muscle Tower. He had done this in order to force the villagers of Jingle Village to find the Dragonball known to exist in this area. If the villagers disobeyed, the mayor would be killed. There were seven Dragonballs altogether, and once they were gathered in one place a huge dragon --- Shenlong, he was called --- was known to appear and grant the possessor any one wish. I had wondered many times exactly what the Red Ribbon Army was gathering them for. I believed what many did; a wish for power, of world domination.

Larry thought differently. He thought something else was going on, but everyone dismissed what he said because of his known habit of stating random uncorrelated things. Plus, he kept on changing what he thought it was. One time he said it was to 'kill everyone merely for a random act of reckless violence' another time 'so Commander Red could become tall' and something about a leather shop or slushies. But I was certain the Red Ribbon Army didn't want the Dragonballs to create a slushie shop.

We tracked the trail to a house, knocked down the door, and demanded to kill 'that monkey-tailed brat'. We, meaning myself and the other guards, were only guessing that the boy was in the cottage. Our only evidence was that the trail from the plane led to it. We had also guessed someone had located him and taken him home before the blizzard let up. There were only three people in the small house – a woman in a black dress, a red-haired girl in pink, and, sure enough, a monkey-tailed brat in a dark blue sleeveless shirt and yellow pants. The soldier next to me looked at the boy and then at me and said, "this is the guy who whooped Silver? He doesn't look like much."

"That your dad?" The black-haired boy asked, pointing to me and looking at the girl.

"No, Goku!" The redhead intelligently responded. "They're soldiers of the Red Ribbon Army! Run!"

I was disappointed. This black-haired squirt didn't know what the Red Ribbon Army was? Had he been living in a hole in the dirt for his entire life? Plus, it should have been obvious, considering we all had red ribbons tied around our left shoulders and were all holding various weapons. To my surprise, the boy took up a fighting position and exclaimed, "all right! Suno, Suno's mom, step back! You evil Red Ribbon guys kidnapped the mayor of this town in order to make the villagers help you find the Dragonball, and now you'll---!" The brat now known as Goku stopped to sneeze several times through his runny nose, totally ruining the impact of his speech. I noted how well Goku seemed to know what was going on. The girl, apparently named Suno, must have told him.

"Okay, this is boring," said one of my fellow soldiers, who quickly shot the kid in the head. The woman and Suno gasped and screamed in a creepy reminiscent to grade B horror movies as they watched the monkey-tailed youth fly three feet back from the unexpected impact of the bullet.

"God," said the soldier in an unimpressed tone of voice as he walked over to Goku's body. He paused and lowered the white cloth that had been covering his face in order to speak clearer. "That was it? That was the guy who knocked out Colonel Silver?" He shoved the brat's body with his boot, as if expecting it to twitch. I made a move to pull him back, but quickly lowered my arm in order to not look suspicious. I doubted anyone here knew about my past experience with Goku, more or less about the fact that I had let the Colonel be beaten by a toddler. For the first couple minutes of the fight I had seen that Silver was doing fine on his own, even getting the upper hand, but I could have…

I stared down at Goku's body, knowing he wasn't really dead. All it would take was a point-blank gunshot to the head. Front, back, it didn't matter. My hand eagerly tightened on the shotgun clenched within my grasp. Just one movement...just a single one...but I may get punished. What if White didn't want me to kill him? What if he wanted to test Goku, wanted him to trail us back to Muscle Tower, so he could observe something worthwhile on the cameras and monitors, get a break, a worthwhile distraction, from being stuck at the top of the tower through status? Be happy and excited…for once?

_Not…now_. And my hand relaxed.

"Silver let his guard down, Jalil." I finally replied, recalling the blue-haired soldier's name from headquarters. "He didn't know the boy was…" I trailed off and looked at Jalil, not knowing what to say. That strong? We hadn't seen Goku demonstrate his strength. I have, but they haven't.

"…That well trained in martial arts." I finished awkwardly, not quite believing my own words. Jalil looked at me again and scoffed in a joking sort of way but didn't say anything. He then bent down on his knees and froze. After a few moments he gave me a two fingered forward-swiping gesture over his shoulder (I took it that he wanted us to come closer) and after a nod of my head everyone from the Red Ribbon obeyed.

"The kid still has a pulse." Jalil observed once we were crowded around the body of Goku. I noted the word 'kid' and shifted with distaste. The blue-haired soldier stared, dumbfounded. "He got shot in the head and he's still alive. How is that possi---"

A gunshot rang out and a yelp quickly followed. We all jumped and looked around, momentarily confused. Suno's mother was holding a shotgun.

"G-get out of my house, you Red Ribbon scum!" She exclaimed, aiming the shotgun at each of us alternately to add effect to her words. "I'll shoot you like I shot the other soldier! I swear I will!"

My eyes quickly flashed over to the soldier who had been shot. I didn't recognize him, but I was glad he hadn't been killed. Judging by where his gray trenchcoat was slowly staining with red, I guessed that Suno's mother had shot him in the right upper arm. I clicked my tongue and gestured to two soldiers with a dart of my eyes, who apparently understood what I wanted them to do. They stood up and managed to carry him out the door. Hopefully he would survive the long walk back to Muscle Tower. If not…well, his problems would be over. I watched them leave, kicked the door shut, then focused my attention on the black-haired woman.

"Trying to frighten us off now, eh? Don't be stupid. Your knees are shaking." I gestured with my shotgun towards the woman's knees. She scrunched up her face. My fellow Red Ribbon soldiers looked at me, confused. Her knees weren't even twitching. "Listen," I continued after a slight blush, hoping that I sounded confident and sly enough to stop her from shooting me. "I have some advice for you. When we leave, change your underwear. I think you just soiled yourself."

She looked offended at that, just like I wanted her to be, and seemed too flabbergasted to know how to retaliate. The daughter, Suno, had long since run away, probably to her room.

"Now, if you don't mind," I paused, trying to edge some tone of politeness in my voice. I flashed a smile for good effect. "We need to get what we came here for."

No one did anything for a while, which kind of ruined of the effect of my words. Finally Jalil sighed in a you're-all-so-pathetic way and wandered over to the table where a red bundle of cloth rested. The woman dropped her weapon, seeing that the other soldiers had aimed theirs at her.

"Yep, it's just like White said. This kid did indeed have a Dragonball." Jalil took out a roughly golf ball-sized orange sphere from the crimson bundle of cloth.

"Hey!" Jalil exclaimed after a few moments, rotating it so it caught the light and reflected. "It's got a couple red stars in it!" The messy blue-haired soldier grinned and told everyone how neat it looked. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, finding it strange how childish he was at a time like this, at his age…but you never can tell about people, can you? After examining it for a while, he put it in his trenchcoat pocket and spoke into his radio communicator.

"Mission completed, sir. We have the Dragonball. We shot the kid but he's still alive. Should we kill him?"

"What kid?" Came the crackling reply.

Jalil sighed and tapped his foot. "Goku, General."

"Oh." White replied after a short pause. "In that case, no. If I know my blind do-gooder types, he'll track us down to Muscle Tower and I want to see exactly how tough this brat really is."

My eyes narrowed in confusion. '_But sir,_' I replied in my mind. '_General White, sir, he was shot in the head. Why do you think he will recuperate?_'

"Roger." After a few moments Jalil quickly asked, "what about the woman?"

"Woman? What woman?"

Jalil's eyes darted. I could tell he was becoming annoyed, but at what or who I wasn't sure. "At the house where Goku was, sir. There's a woman and a girl. She shot one of us but he's not fatally injured. Some of the men are taking him back to the base as we speak."

"The **_girl_** shot you?"

"No, General White." Jalil seethed in an exasperated tone, but quickly cleared his throat and coughed, as if trying to cover it. Then he continued in a much more casual tone of voice. "The woman did, sir."

Another pause.

"Kill her if you want."

So Jalil clicked off the communicator and glared at us. We had all stopped to listen to the conversation, which meant facing him instead of keeping our eyes on the woman like we were supposed to. Kill her if you want. I thought that over, knowing there had to be something White had been trying to lead us to. Suddenly I understood. If you want, meaning…_yes_. After a couple moments of staring, I turned around to face the woman, opened my mouth to give the order and---blinked. Suno's mother wasn't there anymore. I headed towards a hallway, thinking that was where she had fled. Soon enough I heard more footsteps and reasoned that everyone was following me. I hated to be followed, made me feel like I was being stalked. But it was even worse with walls around. It was such a tight enclosed space…I was insecure, slightly paranoid, armed, and being stalked in a small hallway. You could imagine what good would come out of that.

Every time we passed a room, a soldier knocked down a door. The first time this happened I whirled around in panic and fired, coming a couple centimeters away from shooting a fellow soldier in the foot. Everyone beyond that point had learned to not break down the door but open it slowly. Sure, it was less dramatic, but it's what they had to do if they didn't want to surprise me. Eventually we found the woman – heard her first, actually – and listened to the conversation she was having with her red-haired daughter. We crowded around the wooden door as quietly as we could, shotguns at the ready.

"You know those bad guys on the Saturday morning cartoons, the ones you like watching at seven 'o clock?" She said quietly to Suno, who supposedly nodded. "Well these guys…" the woman trailed off. "These guys…are not like those guys."

The daughter remained silent and her mother continued.

"They won't exercise restraint because you're…a child."

"Damn straight." Whispered a fellow Red Ribbon Army soldier under his breath, which I recognized to be Jalil. I smiled and sent a message to them with my eyes. _Just wait a couple more seconds._

"But mama, are you sure they're still---"

"Shh!" Said the mother, who spoke in a hushed voice, so low I had to press my ear against the door to hear. "They will kill you if they get the chance. You must _not_ give them that chance, Suno. They're still here, probably right outside this door…"

My fellow soldiers shifted slightly in disappointment. I stepped back and frowned; that would really dampen the impact of our entrance. Maybe I shouldn't have waited this long.

Seeing the opportunity, a soldier suddenly rose a foot and knocked the door off its hinges. I stepped forward and yelled at him, tried to grab his arm in order to pull him back, but he was already inside the small room. I stood there for a few moments, shocked. I was the leader of this insignificant expedition of murder. Why did he not do as I say? There was a yelp and a couple soldiers ran past me and into the room. Suno's mother stood up and began to tell her daughter to hide but the woman died in mid-sentence. In turn, the daughter did the exact wrong thing and stopped. She shouted her mother's name and tried to return to the body but I shot Suno in the back. After a long pause I gestured with my head towards the door of the small house.

"Let's go, men." I said. "Did as White ordered, now let's get back to the base."

"But is it really wise to leave that Goku brat alive?" One soldier asked, looking down the hallway towards the front room of the cottage.

"Just do as ordered." I replied, knowing that anything more or less could mean our executions. Eventually we filed out of the small house. One soldier took the time to kick the unconscious Goku before leaving. Even so, I was the last to go and did a quick surveillance. Something else had been in the cloth bag, a radar of some sort. As far as I could tell it was even more advanced than ours. Breaking my own rules ("nothing more, nothing less"), I stuck it in my trenchcoat pocket and headed out the door, but stopped again and looked down the hallway where the bodies of the mother and child lay. I continued staring, even after one of my men shut the door, only coming back into reality when a soldier tapped me on the shoulder. I glanced back and recognized it to be the one who had mocked me.

"Why did you stay behind, Corporal?" Jalil asked.

"Last-minute check." I replied grimly, facing him. "Just to make sure we haven't missed anything."

Jalil stared at me for a few moments, in a way that made me wonder if he thought I was lying. But then the messy blue-haired soldier turned and began heading back towards Muscle Tower. I assumed the role of Follower again and trudged through the snow after him, grateful to get out of the role of being the leader; I had never been the kind of person who enjoyed responsibility, even though I had been promoted a couple times since joining the army. And with each new rank an extra brick of accountability was placed upon my shoulders. It would be a long trek back, and I was as tired as hell, but there was nothing I could do about it.


	4. Regret is Gnarled Blades

I decided to wait until the next day to give General White the radar. After all, Jalil had given the Dragonball to him right after we had returned to Muscle Tower and that had been the only thing expected of us. Our reward, outside of a promotion for Jalil, was nothing more then a quick "good job", and even then maybe I had just been hearing things. Five minutes after returning to the base it was back out into the snow trying to shoot at anything that moved. But that had been---how many hours ago? I had lost count. But in any case, now it was around 11 p.m.. The soldiers who had managed to sleep were either sleepwalkers or snorers, and that, as I'm sure you can imagine, didn't help anyone else get to sleep. Twice I woke up because someone stepped on my hand or pulled the trigger of a firearm in their sleep. Apparently some Red Ribbon soldiers didn't know any better then to sleep with a shotgun five inches away from their head. After those incidences I gave up trying to get to sleep and passed the time thinking. Luckily Larry wasn't there to bother me. In fact, I had made sure he was on the other side of the room, drunk on sleep, before I even considered the possibility of lying down for the night.

Even so, thinking got boring after a while and I eventually spotted someone sitting up, holding a small flashlight about 20 feet away from me. He was writing something down very quickly on some sort of notepad.

"So," I said, propping myself up on my elbow, "what's your deal?"

The man jumped and quickly closed whatever had been writing in. He looked at me with a confused, surprised where-did-you-come-from expression for a few moments before he shined the flashlight in my eyes, as if confirming that I wasn't talking in my sleep.

"Could you stop that?" I demanded, narrowing my green eyes and shielding my face with my hand. He blinked apologetically and lowered his flashlight, balanced it on the floor so that the beam pointed upwards, towards the ceiling. Even from this distance, I got a good look at his face. He seemed about 30 to me, had a dark green sash tied around his forehead and really needed a shave. However, his black hair was kept extremely tidy. After a bit he asked me what I meant. It took me a while to realize that he was referring to my question. He was the nearest person fully awake, and I was bored to death, so why not try to strike up a conversation in a situation where only people with earplugs could get to sleep? I rephrased my question; why are you in the Red Ribbon Army? He apparently saw my intention of starting up a conversation, because the soldier picked up his flashlight and navigated through the dark over to me. If he stepped on anyone, they didn't feel the need to react. He sat about two feet away on the only spot of floor not populated by weapons, arms, legs, or heads and glanced at me. I repeated my question, thinking he had forgotten that I was waiting for an answer.

The man took his time answering that. Actually, he seemed to want to avoid answering it altogether, but eventually he told me that he was a master pickpocket and needed the money. I laughed when I heard that – "why does the Red Ribbon Army need a pickpocket? If we wanted to open a door we'd just blast it down with tanks!" – but then he asked me why I had joined and I instantly stopped laughing. He smiled when he noticed me struggling to find an answer. His smirk was a dark, I-knew-it-all-along type of confident grin that creeped me out on so many levels…it made my mind freeze and blank out, and the flashlight beam nearby wasn't helping.

"You don't have a real reason, do you?" He said slowly, again with the sly confident feature, shaking his head back and forth with a gaze that I interpreted as pity. That made me stiffen, made me angry, but then he told me something that made me want to listen.

"I got out of jail a few years ago." The soldier said, adjusting the green sash tied around his forehead. "Got to see my family. They live in Jingle Village, you know. Right down there." He gestured with his finger towards the only window on level One – a small hexagonal cut in the wall that showed us nothing but snow. After a pause he stroked his chin and asked if I had a family. I shook my head, told him no. I was 24 years old; not much interested in raising a family anyway. He nodded, chuckled, and said that now he had told me something about his life, I had to tell him some of mine. So I did. I had been a guitarist for a long while, got loads of money off of that – hearing that, he laughed and congratulated me, telling that good traditional music was hard to find these days, because "everyone is so preoccupied with jumping on the bandwagon they don't stop to wonder if uniqueness could ever be valued", and by that I guessed he was referring to the current rap fad sweeping across the country like a bad case of acne. This soldier didn't seem like the creepy person he had been a few moments ago.

His personality had changed. Now he could take a joke, laugh at it, reword it, and make it into something new. I told him a bit more – about my first driving experience, when I drove my first car I had gotten for my 18th birthday straight into a brick wall and about the consequences I had received. We both got good laughs out of that. Him and me talked throughout the entire night, swapping stories, laughing at the ridiculous mistakes and goofs we'd made as teenagers…but my mind kept on returning to what he had said at the beginning of our conversation. Got to see my family. They live in Jingle Village, you know. _Jingle Village_? Mmm-hmm. Right down there.

_Down there_? Yes.

"Say, ah---" I paused and looked at him curiously.

"Saudi." He replied. "Like Saudi Arabia."

"Saudi. Saudi." I said, enjoying the sound of it. "Glad to make your acquaintance."

He nodded. "I already know who you are. The soldier with the incomprehensible---"

"Really long exotic name no one can pronounce worth shit." I finished, frowning at my new nickname. I kept wondering why everyone called me a soldier when I was actually a Corporal. Perhaps it was easier to say, or maybe it felt more natural. After a moment I shrugged it off and continued. "Yeah. That's a little too long if I do say so myself. Like everyone else, you can call me Joe."

That should have been the end of our conversation. Should have, should have, but then…

"Hey, Saudi," I began, watching his expression turn from amused to attentive, "did your daughter like to watch Saturday morning cartoons?"

His face darkened slightly and he asked me why I wanted to know. I laid down on my mattress, turned on my side so that my back faced him and did not reply. I waited for Saudi to question me more, but after a moment there was the noise of shifting, the noise of fading footsteps, the noise of gnarled bladed fingers beginning to slowly tear their way through my skull and into my brain, overtaking my mind, thought by thought.

_That your dad_? He had asked her.

_Goku, they're soldiers of the Red Ribbon Army_…_run for it_!

Did I really…


	5. Arigato, Saudisan

(Note: Originally I wrote this with the intention of bringing in five reoccuring dream characters: Larry, Steve, Reality (it was a patch of distorted air and it had a cameo already. See if you can find it), Nananjookartslart, and Valikin, who you haven't met yet. However, I felt that Steve somewhat ruined this chapter. He was originally going to be more, and have a story line of his own, but, well...here he just came and went because I felt he only existed to freak out, mock, and confuse, White. I would also like it if you guys told me what you thought about the characters - I tried to give everyone a personality, and for those who weren't the main characters - like Jalil, the pilot,General White, and Saudi- enough info so that you would be wanting to get to know them better. As you can see, I took my own twists on the canon characters, especially Murasaki, who, I'm afraid, fell out of the story. I was planning on bringing him back, but never got around to it.)

"The Corporal with the incomprehensible name reported he discovered something in addition to the Dragonball. He mentioned something about a pancake or an ancient curse or some shit. He's currently waiting outside, General. Should I send h---"

"And if he comes from over there, I shall send a barrage of missiles! And if he appears---" there was a short pause, then a sound that reminded me of a piece of chalk being slammed down on a chalkboard, then a really loud squeaky noise which was sharply cut off. "HERE and charges the tower, the first assault shall be unit C, division A-4, and then---" the voice stopped. There was the sound of a cork being unscrewed, a long silence, and then a brief laugh. "If he continues to come, I shall initiate the mines. Like a lamb to the slaughter…"

That was what I had heard before the door to the top floor opened. It was the next day. I stepped cautiously inside and looked around, but tried to not appear too nervous. It was a spacious room, with two long table-like things with lots of buttons and display panels used for whoever knows what. There was small TV in one corner, your average cordless phone next to that, and a small circular table near the center of the room. On it rested a box of cigars, a wine bottle, a glass, and a couple documents. The red chairs were almost of the Lay-Z-boy variety.

Two people were standing in the room. I recognized one to be Ninja Murasaki – and I only knew who he was due to that half hour I had toured the main headquarters I had seen a soldier impersonate him. He had a purple short-sleeved, almost Samurai-like outfit, with a blue sash tied around his waist. His black hair was pulled up, and tied back with something that resembled duct tape. From his right shoulder to just above his left hip ran another sash - this one white - which held the sheath for his sword on his back in place. I guess he was White's right-hand man, an assistant, it seemed.

As for White himself, I instantly knew he was the oldest of the Red Ribbon officers. How I could tell, I'm not quite sure, but something about him said, _I'm the oldest of the Red Ribbon officers. Don't ask about my age or I'll execute you_. _Kthxbai_. Tied around his neck was a red bandanna-scarf thing, for lack of better word, and he had a long-sleeved green sweater on. He had off-tan pants, which he tucked into brown boots, lavender hair, and currently he was smoking a cigar, standing at a small desk in the far corner of the room which was littered with papers. In his right hand he held a black marker. White was making rash, hasty movements with his right arm, muttering under his breath and guffawing at random intervals. It took me a moment to realize he was formulating some sort of battle plan. Then I noticed, on the far side of the desk, was an open flask. At a complete loss, I sat down in one of the red chairs and waited. After a bit Murasaki seemed to realize that White hadn't heard him and repeated the message in what I thought was a much louder voice than necessary, but after a moment the General's mad planning spree quieted and he set down the marker, rolled up the paper (I was able to catch a glimpse of it, and it had very long bold black streaks, a large column of pictographs in dark green, and a huge demonic happy face in the upper left hand corner), and quietly took a seat across from me.

"So," he said, leaning back in one the red chairs and setting his feet on the table, "you said you got something besides the Dragonball?"

"Yes, General White." I said with a slight stutter, a bit unnerved by that display of…_planning_, or whatever you wish to call it. "The enemy's radar."

He blinked and didn't seem that impressed. "But we already have radars."

"Yes, but not one like this. With all due respect, it is more advanced than anything we have and can zoom in and out just with the click of a button, allowing you to pinpoint the location of the Dragonballs exactly. In the center is a red arrow, indicated where the holder of the radar is. Glowing yellow pinpoints represent the Dragonballs. Would you like me to demonstrate?" I grimaced slightly, feeling as if I were performing a sales pitch.

Now White was interested, considering our radars could only locate the Dragonballs within a one-mile radius. Of course, I wasn't sure how to turn the thing back on. It had been on when I had taken it, and apparently I had pressed something to shut it off. Or maybe it ran out of batteries. I'm not sure where this thing got its power supply.

"Let's see if this radar is as good as you proclaim it to be!" He exclaimed cheerfully, throwing his head back and laughing. So I dug around in my trenchcoat pockets, found it, and held it out. It was a rather strange circular device, resembling the average pancake or lollipop in shape; circular but flat. It was very small – about the size of a large magnifying glass, and rimmed with white. On top was a small black button and a gray one next to that – presumably, the Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons – but overall it was dominated by a dark green grid.

"Are you sure that contraption can execute all the actions you proclaimed it could?" Asked Murasaki, who had moved a bit closer in order to get a better look.

I nodded, "yes. Now I just need to figure out how to turn it on." I flipped it over, but saw no buttons besides the two on top. So I pressed those but nothing happed. I felt a wave of discouragement roll over the room and began to look quicker.

"Just hold on, I'm sure I can get this thing to turn on…" I said with slight urgency, though doubting it.

"There's a possibility of it being solar powered." Suggested Murasaki with a slight shrug, but apparently that was the wrong thing to say, because White's face suddenly became serious. He set down his cigar, stood up, walked over to one of the large wall-spanning windows and pointed towards the sunset-lit snowfall.

"Tell me what's happening out there." Said White.

"It's…err, snowing." I replied bluntly.

"Is it Christmas yet? No, it's just what I have to look at 24-7!"

"Sorry sir, but it's nothing we can---"

"It's always cloudy and the view from up here stinks! Do you know that the nearest political club is a 108.2 MILES AWAY? .2! How ridiculous is it that I know the distance to the _nearest **tenth**_?"

Both Murasaki and I seemed a little bit lost as to what to do as General White went into this really long rant. We didn't make any move to speak to him, and waited for his anger to burn out. Yeah, like I thought; White wasn't the calmest guy in the world. After about seven minutes or so, the General finally calmed himself down by taking a small swig of wine.

"Right, anyway," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, "what were we talking about again?"

"The radar." I grumbled, looking at my feet.

"Right." He repeated. "Well, good job, Corporal, it will…" White paused and all expression fell from his face. He looked at me with the sort of expression you expect to see on people who had just woken up from a long sleep and asked what my name was.

I took a deep breath; I had seen this coming. I knew I couldn't lie about my name in front of my commanding officer. "My ID is 110645." I said slowly. "My name…it's, ah…" in an attempt to buy time, I scratched my ear and shifted my weight to the other foot, but it was equally uncomfortable on both and he was beginning to look impatient. "It's…it's…my name is Nananjookartslart, sir." I finally responded, knowing through 24 years of experience what the reaction would be.

General White stared. "Nana-what?"

_Yes_, I replied in my mind. _It confuses me, too._ _Please don't ask me to spell it out; I can't._

Murasaki had the oO expression on his face. There was a silence session until a large crack suddenly appeared on the window White had been pointing at before his rant. We stared at it, and the blinding light, which had only been coming out of a thin line, now crept up, left, and down, and then widened to form a square. Then a human figure with angel wings and a robe stepped through and the light vanished. He turned, saw us, and blinked in confusion.

"This isn't Egypt, is it?" The angel asked.

"You!" White yelled accusingly. "What the hell just happened with my window?"

The new guy, who was holding a steel knife with red jewels embedded in the side, turned around and looked bewildered.

"Now I know this isn't Egypt!" He cried. "There is no snow in Egypt…now how I am going to get there on time?" The angel-like person sat down in one of the chairs and looked, puzzled, at the black digital watch around his wrist. His facial expression changed and he shrugged. "Oh well. The Spartans have been invading for the past hour or two. I wouldn't want to go there anyway." He stuck the odd knife in his belt, placed his hands behind his head (which, I imagined, was quite hard to do because of his wings. Come to think of it, angels didn't make any sense at all because in order to have wings his shoulders must have had an extra joint which would mean his skeletal anatomy was the most screwed up thing in the world) and smiled widely at us all. I blinked, feeling uncomfortable; that smile reminded me of Larry's.

"Get out!" Screamed White. "Get out of my chair, asshole!"

The angel shook his finger at him. "No no, old guy, this is MY chair. Yours is right there." He pointed with a half-hearted gesture to a vacant chair at the table.

I wasn't quite sure of what to make of all this…a strange brown and blond haired winged guy just jumped through a light-spurting crack in a window. To make matters worse, Larry barged in.

"Quick everyone, the ninja wizards are attacking! Man the ice-laser-beam-shooting scrooge dragons! Ask Silver if he wants a cookie! Fluff my pillow! Damage the crazed five-armed lumberjack! Now now NOW! You must if you want to koheart!"

White looked like he was about to go mad and kill everyone within six miles (technically I couldn't blame him), but suddenly the radio crackled, causing him to focus.

"General White! There's a demented kid coming this way!"

"What? Already?" So White rushed over to the microphone and peered through the large wall-spanning window. I followed, and sure enough there was a small figure running towards the base. The angel took this time to introduce himself as Steve Iccarus Rotheart but no one paid any attention. Or tried not too, in any case…no one can shut off their hearing. Larry had mysteriously vanished. In a totally detached state of mind, I noticed that it was one of his few talents I was aware of.

"Goku. He's finally healed up and ready to kick butt." I said, not at all surprised.

"You **_imbecile_**!" White pointed at me. "Go to ground level! You're a damn guard, so guard! And you!" He pointed at Steve accusingly. "Don't do anything! I have no clue how you---"

The angel blinked, sat up, and looked offended. "What is the point of you speaking to me? You can't tell me what to do, you're just an old chubby Russian dude who yells a lot and smokes cigars. Beside, the main flaw of this place is that no one is completely organized." He laughed in a way that reminded me of nerds discussing their favorite video game. "Look at you, spouting orders like that! If people were organized here, this guy would be on the ground already, right?"

White looked at me, seemed to notice that I hadn't moved, and exploded, "what are you waiting for?"

So I gave a quick salute and rushed away, out of the room and to the elevator and out the door, only to find that the guards who had been standing in front of the base were lying in the snow, either knocked out or dead.

I spoke with my communicator. "There's no one out here, sir. I believe the brat has already---" I froze and looked ahead. There was an incredibly tall red pole sticking out of the snow. Looking up, I saw that it led to one of the windowsills on the tower. There was a small figure standing there. '_Goku_?' I thought, confused.

"You're planning on coming in through the window?" Came General White's disappointed voice over the loudspeaker. "That's ridiculously lame. In any case, what did you come to the tower for, kid?"

Goku yelled something I couldn't quite understand, then began bashing his head on the window, probably in an attempt to break it.

"Shit! Kid, go through the door! The **_door_**!" Screamed White. Then, after a short pause, "Corporal! Shoot him! Get backup if you have to, just don't let him break the goddamn window! I had to replace it six times since last week and…and where the hell did Murasaki go? Tell that moron to return to the fourth floor and defend it!"

'_Hey_.' I thought to myself. '_Steve was right; this place is ridiculously unorganized. But Goku did catch us off-guard_...' sighing heavily, I got ready to fire, then stopped, noticing that Goku was no longer bashing his head against anything. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the pole had vanished. There were tiny footsteps all around me. Could he really be that fast? I looked ahead and saw the door to Muscle Tower wide open. I frowned, knowing that I had the decency to close the damn thing. Now all the heat will come out here. '_Great. So much for a warm sleep_.' I thought, before replying, "he's in."

There were lots of gunshot and yells, and as I went back inside, I noticed everyone on level Two was either knocked out or dead, just like the men outside. It was disturbing me, how fast this Goku brat was. If anything, he had gotten faster and stronger since the time Jalil had shot him. The second level of Muscle Tower looked like a tornado had passed by. Everything was a complete mess, with chairs overturned and cracked floor tiles everywhere…

It was strange, but the guilt was beginning to catch up to me. Now, of all times, when I was probably needed most. It came in a wave, a huge encompassing whirlpool. I hadn't meant to kill the girl, just nick her in the shoulder. From the time I had held my first BB gun on my 8th birthday, everyone had always told me what amazingly quick and precise aim I had, yet my wrist had jerked spastically that time, causing it to line up with her spine. Had something made me nervous which caused that to happen? I wasn't quite sure about the sudden change in General White's attitude towards Goku, either. First he had said he would enjoy someone trying to take on Muscle Tower, but now he was panicking. Had White set aside what Silver had reported to HQ the hour before his execution? That Goku had incredible strength and skill, that someone must have trained him, unknowingly hitting the nail on the head and no one believed him just because everyone thought he was trying to make an excuse for being throttled by a child?

I stood in the entranceway of Muscle Tower, looking at the bodies sprawled out on the floor or lying pressed against the walls. Had I known any of them? Was one of the people Jalil or Saudi? But the bodies outside…eventually I became a bit too curious and stalked outside again, turning the bodies over in order to see their faces or digging them out of the snow in hopes that someone, at least a single person, was alive. No such case. Eventually a body next to a lightning-struck tree caught my attention. I walked over, bent down, and turned him so that he face upward. I shifted, recognizing that face. Yes, Saudi was dead…

I did not know him very well, or at least had known him for a very short while, but he had made me see that not everyone in the Red Ribbon was hungry for world domination. Saudi had been a very upbeat person…if he had lived longer I was sure we would have become great, possibly best, friends. He often pointed out things I wouldn't have seen on my own, caught bits of humor I would have missed…there had been a short conversation we had had – the last one – and I remembered his words. But now, years later, they're beginning to fade; I wrote this just so I could remember those words, so when I am old and forget everything I can at least know what he had last said. "So then an accountant tells me they'll have to take it out of my next pay check, and I'm just like 'wait a minute, man, the ribbon should come _with_ the uniform: **free**,' end of discussion!" He had been a good friend, however short our friendship had been. But I didn't know what to do…it was not my place to go to level Three and I was certain Goku was already there, having beaten and killed those on level Two and possibly One. I wanted to ask why – it couldn't be in self-defense because of the sheer amount that were dead now – but I knew better.

"So, Saudi, you still upset about that pay check?" I muttered to his corpse, hardly hearing my own words due to the harsh wind. It took me a long while with only the aid of my hands, but I buried him in the snow. Then I went back inside, to the little that remained spirit-wise of Muscle Tower.

There was a lot of thumping and crashing noises coming from above, and I guessed that Goku was on his way to the top. But he was on level Three now, or just arrived on level Four. I couldn't go there; it was restricted. But the killing…I had killed one more person besides the girl, and I could have changed that, too, if I had only paid attention. Slowly I made my way over to a table, righted a chair, and sat down. I held my head in my hands, trying to sort things out. I wasn't sure how long I stayed there, motionless, trying to think with a lost mind, but the sound of footsteps caused me to look up. It was Jalil, halfway down on the stairs that led from level Two – this one – to the level above. He froze and looked at me. I asked him what he had been doing, and he said that he had been watching the fight between Major Metallic and Goku, that Metallic seemed to be getting the upper hand. '_But that's when they always lose._' I had replied in my mind. The blue-haired soldier also told me that there was nothing stopping us from going to the levels above, but I refused to believe him; if they were off-limits, surely there would have been some sort of…some sort of…?

Jalil apparently saw that I was having a mental breakdown, because he sat across from me and folded his hands but did not speak. He assumed the pose psychiatrists have when their patient is blabbering on about a long story and they can't possibly grasp what is going on because the patient isn't making any sense…but I had to tell someone, had to get the guilt out, so I talked and talked and Jalil listened and nodded but didn't hear what I said until the loudspeaker blasted on with life.

"Soldiers," came the proud Russian-accented voice of General White, "Goku is now officially near dead."

We blinked. There was a pause, as if White was considering rewording that last sentence.

"…In any case, the kid jumped out an open window and managed to escape on this weird bit of what appeared to be flying cotton candy." There was a pause and I realized he was going to have one of his ADD moments. "It's the weirdest thing. This is supposed to be Earth, right? If this is really Earth, then why are there still dinosaurs and sabre-toothed cats walking around, both of which are millions of years apart if you go by the evolution theory…not mention the fact that there's also flying cars, and houses that pop out of pills? What the hell is going on with---"

"General White, sir," interrupted Jalil exasperatedly, standing up and running a hand through his blue hair, "what do you want us to do about it?"

The reply ("what was I talking about again?") was just to 'go after him'. I stood up as well, thought about telling him that all but a handful of soldiers were dead, that what he was asking for was ludicrous in a situation like this, but held my tongue, and would have greatly regretted it if I hadn't because I was sure if I had lashed out at General White he wouldn't have told me. First he asked if I remembered Colonel Silver. I nodded – how could I forget anyone so different then the commanding officer I had now? Then he asked if I remembered how successful I had been at finding the Dragonball. Again, I nodded, remembering that I had found the most valuable item in the world in a time span of just a week after arriving at Silver's temporary base, that I worked harder than anyone else, worked longer than anyone else and that I had been nearly killed by my fellow soldiers for refusing to stop. But all the same, I had no clue what White was getting at, and Jalil had no idea either, because he stood there, motionless, with a dumb I'm-spacing-out-here expression on his face.

White then asked me if I knew who General Green was. I said yes – Green was the strange somewhat creepy-looking Viking-obsessed man who commanded Colonel Silver, Violet, and Yellow. Then I got the news that he had recently been executed –something about standing too close to Commander Red, who was extremely short, as in somewhere around two feet tall (no one really knows for sure) – and that the army was in need of a replacement. Instantly my mouth dropped open.

"Oh my god." Breathed Jalil, his dark brown eyes wide. "You can't be serious…" He looked over his shoulder at me, as awed by this insane revelation as me. I stepped back as if I'd been hit, ended up tripping over a chair and injuring my head, but did not get up, just laid there on the floor in shock, trying to comprehend it all; it had been hard enough just being a soldier in the Red Ribbon Army, even a Corporal was beginning to feel a bit over my head, but a General? I hadn't even had training – my good aim and reflexes were the only reason I was still alive in the first place!

"Do you want to take the offer or not?" Came the voice on the loudspeaker, obviously becoming impatient. "There are plenty others who've shown their worth."

Jalil looked at the loudspeaker, then at me, then back again and told White that I was having an episode, and I guess I was, considering all I could say was 'I d---', but I was still busy trying to wrap my mind around the concept. General Nananjookartslart Mathew Copper. Did that sound okay? But I still…no training…no training…for a moment I wished I was back home, back with my parents, seven years old instead of the 24 I was, when I could smile the content, naive grin of a little child who honestly hadn't once paused to consider the potential dangers of the world. I suddenly wanted to get up and go hug my mother, tell her I was home and home to stay, but I didn't kid myself; this was, after all, a chance, and there were few (second) chances in the Red Ribbon…


	6. Just to Contact Him

Things happened quickly and strangely. My fellow soldiers – well, I guess I can't call them fellow anymore, considering I took the offer – didn't look at me the same way. Of course, in a way, I had already been their superior. I had been promoted three times since joining the Red Ribbon Army, one of the occasions being my locating of one of the Dragonballs. Whenever I entered a room they all simultaneously stood and saluted, making me feel awkward and even less about myself; it bothered me that they kept on congratulating me. Some of the dark people told me that one day I'd screw up and be executed and those were the comments that stuck in my mind. As it turned out, Goku had not known about level One, or at least didn't understand the concept of stairs that went downward, so there were a lot less casualties then I thought. Larry was still alive, but people stopped him from doing anything absurd whenever I was around; I thanked them for that…in my mind, of course.  
I was now in complete charge of two Colonels, and White told me that I would be meeting them very soon – the very next day, in fact. Since I was a General, I needed to relocate, far away from Muscle Tower, which I was happy about; I had long since begun an epic battle with the snow. Since there wasn't much of a heating system in Muscle Tower (the rare times where the lot of us had made s'mores over a fire and built frowning snowmen did not count), I hadn't been warm in three months. In that sense, I guess you could say I somewhat admired White, how tolerant he was of the snow and cold. But then again, he was trapped at the top of the tower through status, and, if given the choice, would have probably wanted to move to a warmer region. General White had put off chasing after Goku for the time being; he was sure the kid was dead anyhow and he needed to take the time to explain things to me, which I'm sure White disliked because he certainly didn't seem the kind of person who enjoyed telling people about things he thought everyone should know or that he dealt with every day.

Basically I would be taking over the deceased Green's southern base and would be receiving soldiers on the same day. Since I had given Goku's tracking device to White and he had given it to headquarters, our scientists had manufactured duplicates, so it would be a lot easier to locate the Dragonballs – of which the army had only two of the seven, and the Dragonball we had was the one I had found, thus Silver had given to General Green, who had given it to Commander Red. I wasn't quite sure who had gotten the credit, but I was sure it was guy who had a synonym of emerald for his name. The second was the one Jalil had given White. I spent my last day at Muscle Tower listening to White talk and lounging around during my spare time, having short chats with the remaining soldiers, Jalil especially, as he seemed extremely shaken up as to what happened, but let's skip ahead a bit to the point where I met Colonel Violet and Yellow so as to not bore you…too much, at least.

I was not quite sure what I had expected of either of them, but I was certain I hadn't envisioned Yellow as a chubby orange-furred humanoid tiger who piloted planes or Violet as a woman. Even since joining the Red Ribbon Army, I hadn't seen one female anything. They both arrived in a jet, a larger and 'upgraded' version of the one Larry and I had gotten shoved into when we were transferred over to Muscle Tower. True to her name, Violet had boyish violet hair. She had aqua-green eyes, an olive sleeveless shirt with blue and black goggles around her neck. She had dark brown gloves, but they appeared to be placed over bandaged hand. The bandages went past the glove, but stopped a couple inches away from her elbow joint. She had beige pants on, which were tucked into tall crimson boots. Yellow wore the traditional brown pilot outfit (which appeared to be a bit too small for him), despite the fact that he was not piloting the jet. I was hesitant for a moment, afraid to leave the relative safety of Muscle Tower, but I was a General now and I wouldn't make a very good impression if I told someone I was scared of the people I was commanding. Clearing my throat, taking a moment to mentally prepare myself, I walked out of White's base with a confident stride and managed to get in the jet without tripping over anything.  
_So far so good_…

"So," Violet said in a tone that made me realize she was not interested in talking to me, looking at me out of the corner of her eyes, "you found the Dragonball in just a week? Before we had the radar improvements?"

I nodded stiffly, looking at Muscle Tower. During my relatively short time there, White had almost become a father figure to me. Colonel Yellow muttered something but I didn't quite catch it because the jet was suddenly up in the air and speeding away. I was surprised at the fluency of it; obviously this aircraft was not meant for the common soldier. I noticed something immediately about these two; either Yellow was in a bad mood or was always like this and everyone had learned to ignore it, and Violet was either having a stressful day or was constantly irritated, which was a bad combination because I always had trouble communicating with people who had those attributes. Yellow gave me most of the information – just stuff like what situations were right to contact them and what to do if so-and-so happened. Almost instantly, however, he dropped his angry attitude and became much like Saudi; he told jokes I actually thought were funny, even though he had a tendency to stammer. By the time we had gotten to Green's base we had actually struck up quite a conversation, which isn't saying much, considering the fact that it didn't take us long to get to Green's temporary base, due to the insanely fast speed we were traveling at, and when we did the pilot told me he was just here to drop me off and that my troops would arrive in half an hour by ground vehicles. When I asked him what I was supposed to do in the half hour they were coming over, Violet told me to use my imagination. A moment later the jet was up in the air and speeding over to, well, wherever it happened to be heading. Just before that, however, Yellow told me not to mind her, that Violet was always like that, and, in fact, that had been her in a happy mood. He also said that the first couple days were always hard and confusing, and that if I ever needed help, just to contact him. The base was situated along side a river, so there was quite a bit of varied scenery. I spent that half hour exploring, going inside and out the multicolored igloo-like structures that made up my new base.

"General Copper." I said to myself with pride in the still empty air, liking the way it sounded. "Copper Shogun…" I paused, looked to my left, and saw a large trail of dust billowing up from the ground some distance away. Great. My troops. I still thought this sucked; I mean, I hadn't prepared an introductory speech, but in a way I felt that this was a test, an analysis to see if I really was General material. The various vehicles – tanks and trucks for the most part – rolled up and nervous people began getting out. I watched them, observed them, noted the shy ones, the soldiers who seemed to be happy-go-lucky extroverts, and the like. When the vehicles had rolled away and everyone was standing at attention, I began pacing, as often did when under pressure.

"I'll be honest about this, men. I literally became a General overnight; I'm pretty much as lost as you are, but unlike you I've been here a while, so I've got other speeches to leech."  
Speeches to leech. Ooh, that was good.  
"Welcome to the Red Ribbon Army; no doubt you've heard of us before you joined, being a crime organization that's feared world-wide."  
There were a couple mumbles throughout the crowd. Some people shifted with slight unease.  
"While I don't expect perfection from petty novices such as yourselves," I faced them, hands clasped behind my back, trying to look as elite and proper as possible, "I do not anticipate failure. You are to search as hard as you can and as long as you can for the Dragonballs with no breaks. No excuses! But you guys got lucky; recently we've had massive improve---"  
"G-General Copper, sir?" Interrupted a lone voice. "How are---"  
"Soldier!" I yelled. "How dare you interrupt your superior!"  
Everyone jumped back in shock and terror, acting like I had committed the world's greatest sin. I realized they were frightened of me…strange, to be me, and be feared.  
"I-I am…" I faltered for several moments but, not wanting to lose my elite appearance, raised my voice and quickly brushed a strand of my brown hair out of my eyes. "I know the Red Ribbon's greatest downfall; it is the officer's tendency to make those they command fear them rather than respect them." I studied their faces, saw most of them lower their shields slightly.

"But that's not what I'm going to do. Those who have followed that template have ended up either dead or excessively incompetent to the point of execution. Now, about your mission…" I began pacing again and continued on for a while, (completely winging it, mind you) telling them about Dragonballs and what they looked like and my experiences with Goku and what to do if he showed up and where the weapon storage was and what building in my base certain soldiers were assigned to and etcetera. In the end they seemed to have a pretty good idea as to what was expected of them, so I guess I had done a pretty good job. But I had not received the upgraded radar yet, so told my men that tomorrow the work would begin.

During the evening I got a radio message telling that Larry had been transferred over to General Blue in hopes of lowering his insanity and getting some sense painfully knocked into him. Once I asked why that was important, the reply was 'well…he's your boyfriend, isn't he?'. I twitched upon hearing that; I knew people would get the wrong idea, but Larry was a leech; he never seemed to want to leave me alone and he always screwed things up for me because of it. I hated him…and yes, I know that's a powerful word. I flushed with rage upon hearing that and screamed, "well I've got a message for you – we were NEVER a couple, we'll never BE a couple, I'm NOT homosexual and I have as much interest in him as I do in the dirty mold beneath my godforsaken sweaty feet!"

The person who had relayed the message seemed pretty flustered; he kept on trying to apologize and stuttered a lot and I yelled at him some more and flipped off the radio while he was in mid sentence. Why was it that people jumped to sick conclusions all the time? But then again that had just been one person. I hope a rumor hadn't started. But as it turned out my brain was still over at Muscle Tower; it would be a hard night's sleep.


	7. And you, on the drive to Silver's base

(Author's Note: This is the ending chapter. From here on, I wrote three additional chapter I got stuck on and eventually didn't finish because I thought I had dragged it on for far too long. It is only in the filler chapters that Silver comes in, so sorry to those who were waiting for the bipolar Colonel to waltz in and shoot someone (the bipolar referring to the fact that every time he's dubbed his personality manages to invert and rotate thirty degrees. Example, in English he's all screaming mad, in Japanese he's quiet and serious, in Spanish he's calm, incapable of becoming angry, and apparently nice to at least one of his soldiers - the dude with glasses that's almost always on his left and like 10 feet away, who has to be some sort of Lieutenant).)

Most of us were up and running very early in the morning, around six AM. The radar still had not arrived, so I left my troops alone for the moment; once it came, I'd become a serious order-spouting dictator. But if I began bossing everybody around and threatening people I would not win respect but gain fear, which was the opposite of what I wanted. While that was totally against what any normal officer would have done, it was as much of a test to me as the speech issue had been. I spent the next two hours killing time until finally a plane came and dropped off two radars. Once I got a hold of one I turned it on (turns out it was both solar and battery powered) and blinked in shock - there was one just a few miles northwest of us! Quickly I gathered my men and we tromped off after the Dragonball in a various array of small jets. During our flight I decided to use the radar sparsely. While it wasn't a good idea to waste time, I knew we were going to find it anyway; the cave wasn't too big. Why spoil the treasure hunt?

Once we arrived, I quickly went to work, dividing soldiers into groups, giving them names (Team A, A1, A2, B, etc.) and sending them off. A couple soldiers asked me why this was necessary when we had a radar and I told them that it wasn't, but it was more exciting and enjoyable for us this way ("we're on a treasure hunt. What's the point if you have a map?").

After a long while of walking with my group, many began pestering me to turn on the radar. I kicked the first who asked out of sheer annoyance, but explained to the others the reason for my refusal to use it. I could tell they disagreed with my methods, but knew that, since I was in control of them, they would not retaliate. And if they did, I would make sure to put them back in their place. During our walk down a large tunnel I halted suddenly, sensing that I was being watched. A couple soldiers asked me what was wrong and I whirled around just in time to see a very strangely dressed man take hold of a large briefcase. One of my men had left it behind, but the reason was unknown. As I ran towards him, the man looked up and released his hold in shock. He attempted to make a run for it, but even without my command, my troops surrounded him, weapons drawn and aimed. The man who had attempted to steal from us was dressed entirely in shades of emerald, with the exception of white bordering the buttons on his long pirate captain-reminiscent vest and dotting the hilt of his worn sheath. He had a diamond eyebrow piercing, a rectangular olive-colored eye patch over his left eye, and forest green corduroy-like pants.

One of my men inquired who he was and the pirate replied with "gee-arg". We attempted to interrogate him several times, but got nothing. Eventually I spoke to him in a demanding voice with elaborate gestures and a large amount of threats but he still refused to tell who he was or anything about himself except 'arg' and 'har' and all that pirate lingo nonsense until finally I was at my boiling point and was just about to give the order to kill. Once again Larry mysteriously materialized out of nowhere and spoke up ("**HEE**!"), clasped his hands together and looked around with an insane giddy gleam in his hazel eyes that could only mean he was going to say something either idiotic or pointless. I had little time to wonder why he was here when he was under the command of an officer who was supposed to be hundreds of miles away from us because Larry cleared his throat and told us that he knew the language and dialect the strange man was speaking. Several other of my groups came into view then, apparently having heard the commotion. With my foot, I dragged the briefcase back from the pirate and bent down, unlocked and opened it. It was filled with artillery…

My troops did not lower their weapons one faction of an inch, but their gaze shifted over to Larry, who was approaching the green-and-white-clad man by means of a strange wavering skip. The pirate stiffened slightly and stroked his black goatee once, apparently fascinated by the soldier. Once Larry was standing in front of the pirate, he murmured something under his breath. A couple men of mine leaned forward in an attempt to catch what had been said, but the pirate apparently understood because he replied with a strange half-jump, a mid-air click of his heels, and a "he-arg-har-garg". This went on for a long while, and I won't tell you the actions and dialog that took place because you would be just as clueless and lost as I had been - besides, it would be dull to write it all down. After a long talk with the pirate (who was now sitting down Indian style, examining his left boot), Larry turned, smiled broadly and saluted to me, as if expecting a reward for his communication effort. My upper lip rose slightly like a snarling cat and I strode forward, gripping the insane soldier around his collar.

"Soldier," I seethed, "if I recall correctly, your commanding officer is General Blue and his base is hundreds of miles from my current standing point. What business do you---"

"Joe-chan," he said, sweat dropping and raising a hand to wave slightly. "Hiya."

At that response, several of my men began chatting amongst themselves. It took me a moment to register that they were talking about me. Realizing this, I threw Larry back and turned around to face them with a sigh of frustration. Larry wasn't supposed to be within a hundred miles of me, so why was he here? After another sigh I placed a hand on my forehead. '_God,_' I pleaded in my mind, looking up at the cave ceiling with a pathetic mixture of hopelessness and begging on my face,'_can't he leave me alone for just once_?' The chattering stopped after a moment and I felt a wave of curiosity roll over my little gaggle of soldiers. It was dead silent and their eyes were on me. Slowly I lowered my hand and turned halfway to face the insane soldier.

"What did you find out?" I asked, calmly as I could, looking at him only momentarily. Larry, who was still on the ground, stared up at me for a few moments before he spoke, but it was not the information I had requested.

"Joe-chan…" Larry began in a tone I registered as confusion. "Joe-chan, you different. You, during the drive to Silver's base, when all you did was sit and shield yourself from the world and grip the silence like it was your lifeline, and you, on the jet ride to Muscle Tower, when you wanted---"

I whirled to face him, my fist clenched. For a moment I thought about how he had remembered what I had done, how I had acted, during my first day in the Red Ribbon Army. _Joe-chan_? I could practically hear my troops ask. _Joe, is that his first name_? _Does General Copper know this guy_? "Soldier, may I remind you that you are speaking to a superior? Address me by that name again and you will be executed! Now," I said after a pause, "what did you find out about him?"

Then, for what seemed like a very long time, Larry told me. The pirate's name was Valikin, and he was apart of the Green Ribbon Army, which, in short, was a 20-member-strong poorly known group of environmentalists who enjoyed filling rifles with tree sap. Valikin had tried to steal from us because the rest of his 'army' had told him what bad people we were to the environment. He thought that, without our weapons, we would stop doing whatever we had been doing to offend the G.R.A.…the Green Ribbon Army, for those of you slow readers. Then I asked Larry why he was here. He replied – through a fairly broken message, as he suddenly began yelling out random words in the middle of sentences – that he was here because he did not like General Blue's slightly creepy obsession with roses ("they have to be put everywhere, **_everywhere_**! I think I'm beginning to get the first-ever case of rose-induced cancer!"), nor the fact that the General executed people if they sneezed and did not cover their mouth or picked their nose in his presence or anything akin. But he did not explain _how_ he got here. Larry also said he was hoping to eventually be under my command. When I asked him why, he replied:

"Because, J---"

I glared at him, and guessed he saw my hand tighten on the pistol I was carrying, because he corrected himself; he called me General Copper, said that we were friends. I shot Larry in the foot without hesitation, asked why he insisted on living in a fake reality. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw a few of my soldiers wince, perhaps surprised at my action. Larry began wailing, crying, twitching like he was having a mental breakdown…and maybe he was, but I didn't care at the moment; I had a Dragonball to find. That was my mission, the reason I was in this godforsaken cave to begin with. Assignment first, leeches later. Yet at the same time I felt that it was my responsibility to take care of him, to protect Larry from everyone else - most saw him as a lost cause, society's greatest failure, the type of man who had belonged in a straitjacket since birth…and maybe all of it was true, but even mentally disturbed people had emotions.

We continued onward, leaving Larry behind, using the tracking device as guidance – it showed the entire cave structure, and I could tell, from the beeping pinpoints on the grid, that we were getting quite close to the Dragonball. I had dropped the treasure hunt; thanks to the pirate and Larry, we had wasted our leisure time. The only reason we could see was because the cave roof was full of holes, perhaps caused by drilling or random cave-ins. In any case, eventually we found the orange sphere, halfway crammed into the small entrance of a burrow in the ground. My guess was that some strange mammal thought it looked pretty and wanted to stash it away, but the entrance to the burrow was too small for the Dragonball to fit through. It took us a while to get it out of the hole; we actually resorted to blowing it out of the ground with a bazooka, much to the giddy joy of those I-like-to-watch-things-explode types of soldiers. Luckily the sphere did not crack or break, but we had to search through rubble to locate it, which took even more precious time away.

Once that was done and I had put it in my pocket for safekeeping, I phoned up Blue and told him that one of his soldiers had been injured during a fight with a genuine pirate (he was extremely skeptical at first, but then he asked if there was any treasure, and I replied "oh sure. Loads." then he became excited and demanded to report my location, which I did). I knew General Blue could care less what actually happened to Larry – he probably didn't even care (or notice) that he was gone in the first place…and I had lied about the treasure; sometimes I enjoyed messing with people's heads, and since we were both of the same rank Blue couldn't execute me. We then made our way back to the injured soldier, and to our transportation vehicles, where I told my men to ready for departure. Larry now had a strip of green cloth tied tight around his wounded foot and the pirate was nowhere in sight.

Suddenly I spotted something glinting a couple feet away from Larry's shoe. I walked over and picked it up, examined it, then grinned – a real diamond? Why did he leave this in the hands of the Red Ribbon Army? Or perhaps while we were gone the pirate and Larry had had a bonding session and this was a farewell gift – then quickly slipped the diamond into my pocket, hoping the slight bulge wouldn't attract attention. Larry had either fainted or had been knocked out, because he was no longer moving. Finally, after a while – too long a while, in my mind…I made a note to talk about the need for more organization to my troops whenever the time came – we piled in our small jets and rocketed out of the cave, traveling towards the Red Ribbon Army's main headquarters to deliver the most valuable item in the world.


	8. Violet, The Delicate Dragon

(Author's note: This is part one of three filler chapters. Silver will come in on chapter nine. Oh, and I pulled a Goku: I forgot to add on the ending paragraph to chapter seven. I'll add it onto the third filler chapter.)

The news came in mid-flight. Muscle Tower had fallen, General White had been killed, and the remaining soldiers were being transferred over to General Blue's base. '_No, you idiots!_' I wanted to scream in reply after a twinge of emotional pain. '_Headquarters! Get them over to headquarters; since Goku's after the Dragonballs that's the next logical place to go! Who cares about all the weapons and technology and the amount of arsenal we have, he's a reckless determined bastard!_' But it was too late; I knew that, for that to have been said, Commander Red had to have given the order, Adjutant Black must have carried it out, and it had to already be underway. There would be no reconsidering because of a single disagreement. I was, after all, just a General. Yet for a moment I considered heading back to my base, fearing what would come next…but I couldn't be portrayed as a coward. Well, not entirely. I decided to have Violet present the Dragonball to Commander Red. Maybe if I played a part, the inevitable wouldn't happen. Not taking responsibility, not speaking my mind and actions, had taken heavy tolls on me in the past.

"Soldiers," I announced, after directing the pilot to turn around, "follow my lead! We're making a quick stop."

It took us quite a while to get to Violet's base and when we landed there was quite a bit of confusion and surprise. Eventually she questioned me in person, and I explained the situation. She mocked me for a bit --- "how do you know what the boy's after?" --- but Violet eventually took my word for it and I handed over the Dragonball and she flew away in the direction of the Red Ribbon's headquarters. Just before that – while the Colonel was getting ready – she announced that I was charge of her troops for the time being. I tensed upon hearing that.

"As your commanding officer, I demand you reconsider!"

She paused, looked over her shoulder at me, and frowned. I saw she was not going to do as asked and I slackened my normally tense shoulders, feeling no need to start an argument. The Colonel apparently saw this, because she smiled. However, her voice had a different tone, arrogant and challenging, yet somehow disappointed. "What kind of General are you, Copper?"

"A proven one. Don't waste time; Commander Red is waiting, Violet."

After a scowl she dropped the conversation and started up her personal jet. In a moment she was rocketing off in the direction of the Red Ribbon Army's headquarters. I was left there with two divisions under my complete control. Suddenly I was in the same state of mind when I had been promoted to General, to Shogun: nervous, confused, stressed, afraid, paranoid. '_These are your troops, Nananjookartslart_.' I thought to myself. '_Time to recall that leeched speech. Back in the days again…_'

I clasped my hands behind my back and paced (I had learned that pose to work well on people's first impression) for a few moments before speaking. "My name is Nananjookartslart Copper---" I was cut off by a single snicker throughout the few number of Violet's soldiers who had come to see what the commotion was about. Others joined in the chuckling moments later. I stopped in my tracks and looked out of the corner of my eyes at them. Usually I would let the first couple mass giggle fests slide, but today I was in a bad mood. Turning to face my temporary troops, I began walking towards them and they stepped aside.

"Yes, yes, let's all guffaw at General Copper's first name." A sudden eruption of snickers to my left. Guffaw. Violet's troops thought that was funny. I turned on my heel and continued. "Look mommy, General Copper is guffawing. Ha. Hahaha! Look at him and his funny first name, laughing like that! Golly gee-whiz, what an absurd name! Nananjookartslart Copper! Nananjookartslart Copper! Crazy like whoa!"

More laughter; I got them into a howling fit. Some of the soldiers didn't seem to take me for real. Those intelligent ones stared, dumbfounded, confused, probably blank in mind and head, but there was a reason I was doing this. The laughter was centered in the far back. I turned and continued my brisk walk.

"Oh look! Now General Copper is doing his impression of General Blue!"

The laughter died down a bit, but only by a couple notches. A couple confused glances were cast from the eyes of intelligent soldiers. Those who registered what I said shut their mouths. When I came to a specific group of soldiers doubled over with laughter, I recognized one of them to be the one who had first snickered at me (I could tell because he had the same tone of chuckling…between breaths and outbursts of absurd laughter, of course). I stopped in front of them, pulled out my handy revolver and repeatedly fired. Laughter froze, snickers morphed into silence, blood dusted the earth. Slowly I set my weapon back in its holster, knowing that Violet would object once she found out. She would most likely say something along the lines of 'you can't murder them, they're MY soldiers'. Well, too bad, girl, because I was in charge at the time. But Violet had screwed up my plan. I wanted to go to Blue's base, call off any attacks he wanted to prepare, and get everyone back to HQ so we could prepare a defense. This new responsibility of controlling her troops let required time slip from my grasp. Goku had taken out Muscle Tower and Colonel Silver. What was stopping him from coming to the source so he could sever the Red Ribbon's heart?

I didn't feel like leaving Violet's troops in the dust; despite the fact that she had practically forced me to control them (either that, or I was too weak-willed to convincingly refuse and put up a fight. Believe what you want), it made me feel as if that would be defying her. For the next three hours I let her soldiers loiter around, allowed them to do whatever they wanted, and they seemed to enjoy that…or maybe they were just putting on a show and were really afraid to make me angry because of what happened at the laughter indecent, and I was beginning to regret what I had done, but there were more important matters to attend to, like figuring out how much time it would take to get to General Blue's base so I could try to convince him to abandon any planned attacks. But maybe that wasn't necessary; maybe I was looking at this the wrong way. Blue was, after all, what one might call superhuman. He could crush a telephone booth with his bare hands (to the point where it looked like your average hourglass, and not without a lot of effort), and as if that wasn't enough he had the strange ability to paralyze people…a psychic power, if you will. I was pretty sure that, if anyone could kill that Goku brat, it was Blue. But people had been sure General White could exterminate him, and look how well that turned out.

When Violet returned I left quickly, leaving my men behind. She only had time to say a single word to me before I was up in the air and speeding as fast as the jet could go towards Blue's temporary base in the southwest.

"Copper." Colonel Violet had said, standing at attention and saluting to me. I know I shouldn't have been, but I was surprised, and to make matters even more stressful, moments after the jet had taken off I had the urge to tell her where I was going and what I thought was going to happen…but it was silly to think that, silly and stupid.


	9. Pity

In my rush to get out of there, I hadn't checked the gas gauge before my flight, so after only 19 miles into the trip landing was not only optional but also urgently needed. I still had over 60 miles to go before I came to the vicinity of Blue's base, and that precious window of time was fading…so much for my Grand Master Plan. Once I landed, I went wild, screaming up at the sky, kicking the plane until I was sure my toes were broken, tearing at my hair, clawing at my face. To this day, I am not quite sure what had happened then or what had truly caused me to act the way I had. Perhaps I was frightened of being stuck in a desert wasteland while dusk was dawning, or maybe it was the fear of Goku destroying my life – or at least ninety-eight percent of it – that drove me to taking such extreme hopeless measures…but in any case, I probably would have done that for hours on end if it had not been for the subtle sound of shifting sand, somehow so clear and vibrant to my ears it caused me to cease my mad attacks on self and sky. Slowly, feeling my anger wilt away and a tear-inducing throb in my foot, I turned around to face whatever had made the noise. The sky was becoming darker, but it was no so dark I couldn't make out the figure of a tall very strong looking man wearing a long blue trenchcoat. Somehow, for some reason, upon seeing that person, I felt nervous and afraid. Me, a General, terrified of a mere shadow…

"If you cooperate I won't take your life." A deep voice said, but the person didn't move.

"H-hai!" I stammered, for reason believing he was serious. The figure raised his voice and asked me if I thought speaking in Japanese was going to help anyone. I replied no, feeling foolish about the water rimming my eyes. Trying to look strong, even though it was becoming harder to see by the minute due to the setting sun, I attempted to explain my situation, that my jet had run out of fuel, but with a swift movement, the man had pulled out a pistol and aimed it at me. He didn't speak, didn't shoot, but I was pretty sure if I had spoken he would have pulled the trigger. Submissively, I got down on my knees and raised my hands above my head. The sun had set now and there was no moon, so it was impossible to see. After a moment there was a clicking noise and a dull flashlight turned on. The beam swept down me with such precision that I found myself in a cold sweat, shaking like a miserable dog, like a child who was getting their mouth examined for cavities by a dentist for the first time. I was a General in the world's greatest crime organization…what could scare me this badly?

Finally the man turned off the flashlight and muttered something under his breath, as if unimpressed. During that time I caught a glimpse of his face but my eyes hadn't registered what I had seen.

"Come." He said.

I refused despite my fear to do as told – summoning up the courage to yell "just who the hell do you think you are?" – and instantly after a loud BANG made me jump spastically. There was an explosion of pain in my foot, which caused me to curse and begin crying like a pitiful sap.

"If you hadn't flinched the bullet wouldn't have hit." Said the man in a tone of voice that made me realize he wouldn't give a damn if he shot me in the head. "That has always been your greatest flaw," he continued. After a moment's pause he spoke in a much more uplifted tone of voice (yet I could tell he wasn't surprised by his realization), "So you're a soldier? What with that uniform…" I was in too much pain to care about what he said. Now I wished I had stayed at Violet's base; she was, after all, a very skilled veterinarian…but humans weren't animals, and then again if I hadn't had left I wouldn't be sitting here wounded in the dark stranded in a desert with a tall stranger.

"Excuse me?" I managed to choke out. "I…I am not just a soldier! You're speaking to General Copper of the Red Ribbon Army." I made an effort to yell the last sentence with pride, but the intense ripping pain in my foot crippled me. I bit my lip and let loose a whimper. It certainly wasn't a great first impression, but it was all I could do to stop myself from repeatedly screaming in pain. I would rather be viewed as a man with a weak heart then an insane one with anger management problems.

"Really?" Said the man in a sarcastic tone, which suddenly grew a lot darker. "Pity."

And suddenly it all clicked. The trenchcoat, the gun, the voice…

I looked at him, or where I thought he was, and uttered, "C---Colonel Silver? But you're dead---"

"Do I look it?" He snapped, making me jump. Suddenly my vision began clouding. A moment later, I felt like I was floating. Then I began to feel tired, and the pain ebbed away…I hardly registered the contact of cold sand against my face when my brain shut down.

I could hear voices…there were others near me. But I dare not open my eyes. Even though the words were distorted due to my grogginess my brain somehow registered the people were talking about me. As I became more aware, everything became clearer, more distinct and defined. I was lying on something soft. Not sand-soft, but artificial-soft. Human-made soft. The softness was above and below me, much thicker and firmer below. Something supportive. I listened to the conversation.

"…think Commander Red would do if he found out?" A woman's voice.

"That trash General or you?" A man's voice.

Suddenly I yawned. Very long, quite loudly, which killed the conversation. Moments later there was the noise of shifting fabric, then a set of heavy footsteps. The footsteps came close, very close, before stopping.

"You're not dead?" Said a deep voice, which I recognized to be the man. "I'm disappointed in you, Copper."

I did nothing. After a moment there was a noise and a sudden sharp pain in my…somewhere. I hadn't exactly come to terms with what body part was where yet, but whatever had been kicked now felt like fire. I screamed and snapped open my eyes, and then quickly shut them in shock of the light. There was the noise of something being scraped back on floor tiles, more footsteps, and the woman spoke.

"I agree, he is trash, but he's your superior officer and you always respected your superiors before. Silver, way back there, he was one of your soldiers, right?"

"Better as a laboring soldier than an incompetent General." He remarked. Eventually I sought the courage to open my eyes, which had begun to adjust to the bright lights. I found out I was in a small room with Colonel Violet and Silver. There was a cast around my foot, a bloody knife and a bullet on a small table next to me. Violet seemed to notice that I was staring at the knife, because she walked over, took it, and cleaned it with a rag. It took me a long while to recap what had happened before I had fainted and when I did I asked how I had gotten here. Neither of them seemed obligated to reply. They both seemed too caught up in their argument, of which I wanted to have no part of. It ended in a long staring contest in which something extremely noteworthy happened. Violet backed down, saying she no longer wanted to fight. Silver mocked her about it, but there was something oddly…teasing and playful about his ridicule, which is only odd because his sense of humor is completely non-existent. It wasn't possible to meet a man more serious than him.

I sat up in the bed and eyed them curiously. Was something going on that I didn't know about? Silver had moved next to the door and now had his arms folded, somehow managing to look cross and contemplative at the same time and Violet was on the other side of the room leaning back in a green office chair. In a complete change of mood and subject, Violet explained that the injury had been pretty bad and that I would be confined to the room for several weeks. Now I could guess what the conversation had been about, the one I had heard while waking up. They had been discussing what to do with me, or Silver, or someone else. Could have been talking about Silver because of the fact that he had been executed several years ago and everyone would spazz out and call him a ghost (most of Violet's troops were superstitious and had a great irrational fear of zombies) upon seeing him or it could have been about me because of my unauthorized mission. Violet had apparently been reading my mind, because she confirmed it moments later.

"If I were to report to Commander Red that the mighty General Copper had died of a bullet wound inflicted by a phantom, do you think he would believe me? How much money would you guys like to bet on it?" She asked with a cold tone.

I managed a grin and decided to ignore the money comment, knowing she'd do anything for some, as a joke or not. "You act as if Silver's dead."

"That's what everyone believes. I did, too, until he showed up on the outskirts of my base about noon." She muttered, glancing over at him for a few moments.

Again, silence ensued, and was only broken by Silver, who quietly left, shutting the door behind him. I gave Violet a questioning look. She shrugged, told me that he was probably going to box or do some target practice.

I blinked. "Boxing? And target practice? With what?"

She shrugged again. "Soldiers, I suppose."

"He's going to shoot your soldiers?" I asked in disbelief, cringing.

"Or yours," she pointed out almost accusingly, reminding me that I had left my troops when I had gone to carry out my Grand Master Plan. I asked her if he was allowed to do that and Violet, in an extremely dismissive half-hearted way, replied that soldiers were replaceable.

"It's what he does when he's stressed or bored." The Colonel continued, grinning and making me feel uncomfortable. Her smile grew after a few moments. "Fighting and shooting things…that's what my dear Jamenson Silver lives for."

Her words were momentarily delayed in the processing part of my brain. Once I decoded what she said, I spazzed out.

"What?" I screamed. "'Dear' Silver? Do you guys have an attraction for each other or something? What the---"

"Why don't you put it on a billboard, General Copper?" She interrupted, standing up. For some reason I felt the need to calm down. After a glare she continued. "That wound of yours became infected. If it weren't for me you'd probably be dead right now. I think I deserve something in return, General, so here's the deal: not a word of this revelation of yours to anyone or I'll be sure to let Silver know, and no one wants an angry Silver stalking them." She paused for a moment, looking thoughtful. "And give me 200,000 zenni. Just to be sure I have your word."

I stared at Colonel Violet. Did she really think I could heave out hundreds of coins from my pockets? Especially when asked by _her_, when **_I_** was her commanding officer? I refused and asked her why Silver was so different – when I had been a soldier he had only talked when necessary and had told us to trust him, but now he was acting angry all the time with an extremely dismissive attitude towards soldier's lives – and she blamed it on me.

"You blew his cover." Violet said to me. "Everyone on earth believed him to be dead until today. If Commander Red got the news he'd surely go after him. He hates being deceived."

"I wouldn't know." I responded quietly, not seeing how anyone knew. Not one of the soldiers, past or present, I had talked to actually knew what Red looked like, let alone what he hated. But Violet, I suppose, was a rare exception. She was going to be very useful.


	10. Simple, Polite Actions

(Author's Note: Yes, I'm serious. This is all I had. By now I felt I had dragged the story on for too long. I had a couple ideas on how to continue it, or at least what to write what happened next, but I just stopped.)

I suppose she felt the need to keep me company, because she didn't leave for quite a while. In that time I told her about my Grand Master Plan, what I expected to happen. Violet – as expected – teased me, wanting me to explain how I predicted where Goku would go and who he would go after.

"It's logical. Goku is after the Dragonballs as well. Why, I don't know, probably to wish for something, and he already wip---" I stopped myself. I had been going to say 'wiped out Silver'. I tried to remind myself that he was alive, right here in Violet's base. "Well," I began again after clearing my throat, "he took out Muscle Tower, killed General White-sama." I paused, seeing her blink in surprise. _White-sama_? I could almost hear her think. -_Sama_? "Then he wiped out, ah, Silver's unit before that, I believe. Now he's been sighted going after Blue. There's no possible way all of this is coincidence. Everywhere a Dragonball had been located, the brat's shown up."

Violet nodded slowly, but I doubted she understood.

"So I finally found one. Goku didn't show up, but---"

"Theory hole." Violet announced, making me stop and wonder what she meant. I didn't ask aloud, and after a confused stare I continued.

"We have three of them now…five of the seven, if General Blue manages to get the two on the sea floor, but that's what I'm worried about. See, if Goku's after the Dragonballs and we have the majority at our base, what's going to stop him from taking on the headquarters?"

Violet opened her mouth to speak but I cut her off again.

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Did you listen to the reports Silver gave before his execution? That boy can throw boulders the size of tanks. Tanks, Colonel. He can jump 50 feet into the air with ease. I can personally vouch Silver's statements, that he wasn't insincere, because I saw it myself."

She asked me how she knew that this wasn't a lie.

"Lie?" I had retorted. "Don't be ridiculous! What reason do I have to lie?"

The Colonel fell silent and soon left.

__

**Ending Paragraph**:

There had been no plan for a resurrection of the Red Ribbon; no one cared. A small amount of the surviving members had grouped together again after the decimation of the headquarters and I had been among them. There had been no need for discussion; just a quick look at their faces was all that was needed to know what they were thinking. Larry was the first to untie the crimson ribbon around his shoulder. The rest of us followed – me last. It took a while to brace myself for what I was throwing away. I was General Copper. Copper Shogun, me, my title…they were low-level soldiers, no one special…but finally I relented; I was a victim of war. The memories would never go away – my mind would just suppress them. There had been times I had wanted to have an hourglass in my pocket to turn back time and repair the misassumptions, but most of all I wanted to correct a mistake made years ago when I had saved a creature not worth saving…

"General." Said Larry, saluting for a few moments, before he lowered his hand, turned on his heels, and walked away. After that brief exchange of actions, the world's most feared crime organization, it seemed, disbanded for the first, and final, time.


End file.
